1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing method and apparatus for detecting the lines of images and the start and end points of the lines.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer vision which is used to recognize objects or environments in images by analyzing the images has various application fields. Information important to the recognition of objects or environments is line information. Image processing apparatuses are capable of recognizing objects on the basis of lines, and are also capable of detecting the lanes of roads.
The Hough transform is used as a method for detecting lines that are present in images. In the Hough transform, an original image is transformed into an edge image having edge information and then the parameters of lines that are influenced by all edge points of the obtained edge image are extracted. Line detection using the Hough transform is widely used because it is robust in the case where noise is present in an image or where there is variation in brightness.
However, in order to perform the Hough transform, it is necessary to perform repetitive operations on all edge points and persistent memory access based on corresponding operation results, so that the time required for the operations is long and a large memory space is required. In spite of the superior line detection performance of the Hough transform, the Hough transform is not suitable for application in the actual industry fields due to the disadvantage of its slow performance speed.